Megan Riaz, a member of the Fit City Tyler Coalition, holds a plank position at Bergfeld Park, the site of the Nov. 7 East Texas Plank Challenge during the Fit City Day in the Park event. Ms. Riaz is on a committee that created the challenge to encourage healthy competition and promote wellness. Courtesy photo.

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Working the core is critical for overall fitness and strength. The core refers to not only the abdominal muscles but also all of the muscles surrounding the trunk, spine and pelvis.

People can work the core with basic movements, but to truly strengthen it, they’d need to be conscious of activating those muscles. 

Ross Campbell, personal trainer and fitness manager at Premier Fitness, put it this way:

“Think of a tree. The tree trunk is the core,” he said. “The center part of the tree is going to be the strongest part. You start getting out to the branches and the tree becomes weaker. If all you work is the branches, meaning the arms and the legs, your body is weak. If you work the middle, the core – all the muscles around the spine – you become stronger.”

A strong core yields plenty of benefits. 

“It’s great for posture, for balance, to prevent injuries,” Campbell said. “It’s definitely good for the stomach and keeps it drawn in tight. … If you have a weak core, then you can have back pain or bad posture.”

Specific exercises used to target core muscles include balancing, such as standing on one leg or sitting on a stability ball. It also can be as simple as doing an exercise standing that would normally be one seated, such as a standing chest press or twists.

“Train your body on an unstable environment,” Campbell said. “If you use one arm instead of two, one leg instead of two that forces your body to activate the core.”

Campbell said a good starting point for the average person is to target their core three days each week. 

“If you exercise daily, you’re getting core in daily, as long as you’re using the right form,” he said. 

 

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